I first tried the Benefit Total Moisture Facial Cream as a sample from Sephora and I fell in love. It perked my skin right up. It was like a miracle had occurred! So the first chance I got, I went out and bought it and began using it immediately. I applied this product every night, but I soon noticed my skin was drying out again-- not as badly as it had been, but noticeably so. And the smell, though not horrible, was overpowering. I decided to move on for a while and try something new.
That something new was the Pond's Dry Skin Cream. My grandma used Pond's for years so I felt that it was certainly worth trying. It, too, had a strong scent but, unlike Benefit's cream, it kept working. I noticed that my skin only seemed dry if I forgot to use it for a night or two. If I used this cream nightly, my skin continuously looked and felt amazing.
Because the look and feel of these creams is so similar, I decided to do a little research and see how similar they really were. They actually only have five ingredients in common: Water, Glycerin, Stearic Acid, Fragrance (Parfum), and Glyceryl Stearate. If you look at the ingredients that set them apart from one another, it would seem that Benefit has the more natural and skin-friendly product of the two. Pond's cream includes a couple of controversial ingredients such as Methylparaben and DMDM Hydantoin, as well as other ingredients that are restricted in countries outside of the United States. However, Benefit's cream has a few controversial ingredients also: Sodium Lauroyl Glutamate, Tetrasodium Edta, and Hexyl Cinnamal. So neither product makes me 100% comfortable about applying it to my skin on a daily basis.
But if we are just looking at how the two products perform, I would definitely say Pond's is the clear winner for me. And it is certainly the better value: Pond's gives you 6.7 oz for approximately $7, while Benefit only gives you 1.7 oz for $42. Perhaps some of their pricing is packaging; Benefit has Pond's beat there.
Again, neither of these products wowed me when I did my research on their ingredient. Therefore I will continue my search for a healthier, but still effective, moisturizer.
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